Simplicity and Happiness
Simplicity
Harvard Professor and positive psychology expert Dr Tal Ben-Shahar told me about the importance of doing less:
“In our rat-race culture we try to do more and more things in less and less time and we pay a high price for it. We pay a very high price for it.”
Levels of depression today are 10 times higher today than they were in 1960. Whilst reporting is much better today, Dr Ben-Shahar tells us that still, objectively, depression is on the rise.
“One of the main reasons is because of stress. We have too much to do. As a result, we feel overwhelmed and that is highly associated with the predicting of depression. So if we want to reverse the trend of depression, we need to end feeling stressed or overwhelmed. We need to do less.”
Today, more than ever before, we are pressured to do more. Here’s what happened to me this morning.
On my commute to work, the tube station was clad with hundreds of adverts tempting me to buy theatre tickets, hire a cleaner, order a book, get a mortgage...
Once I arrived at the office, I began to do some light research for this article. I found myself looking at this screen on my laptop:
Here is a news piece about how, in today's society, our attention is all too often hijacked. It warns of the associated mental health problems including anxiety and depression.
Ironically, the same web page is guilty of the exact same thing. Where I should be reading, I’m encouraged to share the piece across Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, WhatsApp and Email. My eyes are also drawn away from the information I had searched for because the side bar tempts me to focus on George Clooney’s children, why Tom Hiddleston has a ‘I heart T.S. shirt’ and a man who has started breastfeeding. Already I feel like there is so much I should know about and not enough hours in the day to get through it all...
Having fought extremely hard to stay on track, I picked up my phone to send an important work email. I was greeted with the following screen:
20 minutes ago, I was up to date with all my notifications. Now, my phone has dictated another to do list with 7 items on it. In one screen, I have to focus on emails (one spam, one work related, one social), a text, a WhatsApp message, edits to one of my work documents and a notification from Google about the state of traffic in my area.
My work email is going to take some considerable mental energy to craft so it’s only natural to be distracted by the 7 wholly unrelated topics that are cognitively lighter to consume. 15 minutes later, I realise I had completely forgotten to write that email.
Corporations, friends and employers are continuously fighting for our attention. Today they have direct access to it via technology at any time of day or night.
Today, lines have been blurred between work and play. We are expected to handle our work and social lives using one device. It means we are endlessly distracted at work and have no ability to switch off when we leave the office. The result is that we continuously feel we have too much to do.
Dr Ben-Shahar points to a study that highlights the effects of having too much to do:
“In a recent national survey of 13 500 college students, nearly 45 percent reported being so depressed that they had difficulty functioning and 94 percent reported feeling overwhelmed by everything they had to do.”
Richard Kadison
His advice is to do less. We need to be conscious of exactly where our attention is directed and say no to noise. He told me that it will not only make us happier, paradoxically it will make us more successful; instead of having our lives filled with endless busyness, we create space to focus on the important stuff and give ourselves time off to recuperate.
Summary:
Doing too much can lead to anxiety and depression
Doing less improves wellbeing and quality of work
More than ever before, our attention is a resource under constant threat of being hijacked. We must learn to focus on the things that matter to us and say no to noise